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Of conscience and creativity

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

I've followed you for what feels like 10 years, as I've traversed the quarter-life crisis and crises of creativity that speak powerfully to the blood that has always run through my veins.

So now I come to you with a more commonplace problem in some ways, but still so connected to the vein of creativity that you speak so well to.

There is a man. Isn't there always? An older man, and one I work with. So banal, I know. But we've been as you might call it, "good," or as good as one can be as two married people. We've admitted our attraction to each other, but agreed it would be reckless, careless and selfish to take it any further. I am not under any illusion that I love him, but I do enjoy his company. And that's my dilemma. After traveling with him for work this week, staying up just talking until the sun came up, I suddenly feel a wave of creativity rushing my every sense. It's like being a teenager again, but one who's actually read ee cummings, Whitman and Milton. I find myself scooping up old poetry books, reading Shakespeare and even writing down the colors of this strange, yet I imagine so universal, blend of emotions. It's addicting in the way that any other vice might be, but I'm still young (so they tell me, at 28), so still learning the ways of this strange and wonderful world.

Raskolnikov seeks mentor

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

I just read your column advising Lost in the Fog, and I couldn't help relating his/her feeling of imprisonment to my own. I'm a freshman in college and I'm extremely unhappy. I don't know exactly how to express this state of discontentment because I've never felt it before. In high school, I self-medicated a lot with pot, taking the pressure off myself. Now I'm at college and it's way harder so I had to stop smoking, but I'm miserable.

I can't seem to escape my ego. I fear constantly that I won't succeed in life -- and for some reason my definition of success is achieving some sort of artistic greatness that will result in fame. I realize this is a totally superficial and selfish goal, but I literally can't stop thinking about it. I tell myself to just be patient, to get through college so that I can explore different forms of art, but I can't find my niche and it's torturous. I feel like I'm a 35-year-old trapped in an 18-year-old's body.

Is journalism killing my creativity?

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

I am a writer. I love to write, and I make my living from writing, in journalism. I gave up a full-time newspaper job to freelance some years ago, which in many ways (not financially) was a great move. So I write and research and work hard every day, pretty much, and hundreds, thousands of words flow easily, which are then published in newspapers, magazines, online. It's great; it's so satisfying to make a well-crafted piece of work.

Yet I don't feel like a real writer. Both a screenplay based on a true story and a novel based on my own early life came grinding to a halt. Without being egotistical, I've been around long enough to know they are both excellent topics, great stories. But I just freeze up after three chapters or a couple of acts. I can't seem to keep going. The bio-novel made me incredibly anxious, bringing up memories I don't want to deal with but must to get them on the page. So I tried it as nonfiction, a pop-culture documentary, switching the focus somewhat and looking at events from a more journalistic angle. Nup.

My friend says I should kill myself

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

Over the past few months, I have written this letter a dozen times. At moments, I would give anything for someone to wave a wand and let me know what I should do, but at the same time, I cannot bring myself to believe there is an easy solution to my issue.

Apparently, I am unlovable on certain levels. When I write this, I do not just mean as a person, but also the efforts of my hands.

My parents were both pedophiles, and I grew up feeling less real than that life-sized doll my mother bought me at age seven so I could have a "friend." When puberty finally rendered me into a monster to them, I was relieved -- but the abuse never stopped. It just changed character. Suddenly I became irredeemable and disgusting. My older brother spent most of my childhood tormenting me, which typically made my parents laugh or chastise me for not fighting back. Even though it pained me beyond words, his uncontrolled anger made me cut off contact with him when I did the same with my parents. My ex-husband spent 12 years of our 14-year marriage encouraging me to be on fertility meds while he knew he had taken measures to never have children (measures about which I knew nothing) because "God told him that He wanted me to be alone." I only found out what he had done when I hit menopause early. God's hatred was how he rationalized his actions when asking me for the divorce. For six months between that request and the marriage ending, he told me nearly every day that he had never loved me or wanted me or even liked me. He had married me out of pity. Given my family, no one else would ever be able to want me. It has been four years since then, and I have only now begun to date again. Finally, I thought I had found someone with whom I could at the very least enjoy physical contact and to whom I could give some delight, and yet he broke up with me so he could go back to the woman who had pureed his heart.

Psych meds dull my creativity

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Dear Cary,

You asked for problems regarding creativity so here is mine. I've been a creative person since childhood. I did a lot of visual art. I played multiple instruments, including playing the piano for 20 years and the bass guitar for two. I did various handicrafts from bookbinding to decoupage. Unfortunately, I have a lot of health issues. I have an autoimmune disorder that has me on heavy-duty pain meds and a long history of psychiatric issues for which I'm on a lot of medication as well.

In the last 18 months as my psych meds have been continually increased due to my symptoms worsening, I've found myself unable to create at all. I can't focus on any one art form, and lack the motivation to even try to create. I bought a new bass and a new amplifier last year and I've barely touched them. My craft supplies sit unused. And while I'm in the process of digging out my old sewing machine, I fear that this will just be one more thing that goes nowhere. I'm on disability and spend much of my days in a struggle to focus on the simplest things.

Ill Doctrine: “Little haters” stifle our creativity

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:08:00 +0000

Haters don't die, they multiply (return of the little hater) on Vimeo.

From grad school to social work

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Dear Reader,

Having trouble finding my column on Salon? Bookmark http://www.salon.com/topic/since_you_asked/and click on that every day. You could also subscribe to the Salon email newsletter and see how that works for you.

Another thing: Please write me more letters on problems of creativity! It makes me think!

Dear Cary,

I recently quit a Ph.D. program in sociology. When I started it, I was full of enthusiasm and desire to learn about the human experience. As I progressed through it, I found myself wishing to be a participant in society rather than an observer. I care very much for social problems and wish to fix them, and you compromise your academic integrity -- or the perception of it -- when you engage in social activism. Beyond that, I was very tired of working to someone else's expectations for no money. The things I enjoyed writing were more creative nonfiction, and I knew my career would not survive that.

So I left. I now work helping disabled homeless people find housing. The day of my job interview, I found out that I am pregnant. Now I am six months into the pregnancy.

I love an angry heroin addict

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Dear Reader,

As I pointed out in the Wednesday column, the best way to read the column every day is to bookmark http://www.salon.com/topic/since_you_asked/ and click on that every day.

I will run this notice up here for a few days so that folks will see it. (In case you've been having trouble finding the column because of the higher volume of stories Salon is now publishing.)

You could also subscribe to the Salon email newsletter and see how that works for you. It works for some people.

Stifled poet in India

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Dear Reader,

Greetings after my holiday vacation, which I spent straightening up the house. How glorious not to be thinking or writing! And yet, after only a few days, I began to miss your letters and the daily practice of responding.

Hey, listen, if you are in the Bay Area, I will be participating in an unusual reading on Thursday night in Sausalito called "Pairings," where prose writers and poets read each other's work aloud. I love reading other people's work aloud! And ever since elementary school, I have been very good at "reading aloud."

As I write I note with sadness yet another tragic shooting in America. I have not commented on the terrible events of the last few months partly out of mute shock and partly because they seem to arise from a derangement more the province of therapists and theologists than commentators. I acknowledge them, however, with a heavy heart and an outraged mind. Like the following letter writer, a budding poet trapped in engineering school, I just don't know where to begin.

Hey there, Cary. I don't know where to begin.

Study: Racial stereotyping linked to creative stagnation

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 22:02:00 +0000

In an article published in Psychological Science, researchers at Tel Aviv University found that racial stereotyping and creative stagnation have something big in common: categorical thinking.

"Although these two concepts concern very different outcomes, they both occur when people fixate on existing category information and conventional mindsets," wrote lead researcher Carmit Tadmor. As it turns out, having an essentialist mind-set about a broad category of people usually means that you're equally narrow in all of your thinking.

As Science Daily reported:

Judd Apatow on “Girls” and “This Is 40″

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 19:51:00 +0000

In an exclusive interview with Indiewire, writer and producer Judd Apatow talks about writing and creativity, the second season of "Girls" and explains how his upcoming "This Is 40" tells a "slice-of-life" story in a "lifelike, unique way."

Apatow also spoke on NPR earlier this week and has given advice As a Grown Man, too.